Last December, I posted a story about Zion Lutheran Church in Prairie City, Missouri celebrating their 150th anniversary. That story was titled, Prairie City Anniversary and Its Perry County Connection. In that story, I posted two maps of sections of Bates County, Missouri that highlighted names which originated in Perry County. One of them is the one shown below which indicates several parcels of land belonging to people with the Bracher surname. I even missed one of the parcels belonging to Charles Bracher.
I also published a second map from the area just south of the one above. It highlights some land in red boxes containing more Bracher’s and a Braeuner. And once again, I missed a T. Bracher.
What I did not recognize at the time was the fact that there is another Perry County surname on this map. It is highlighted with a blue box, and the name is Fleischer. I ran across a marriage that took place at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg on May 16, 1854, and began a search to see if it could be the focus of a blog post for today. That marriage had a bride by the name of Henrietta Braeuner and a groom by the name of Theodore Fleischer. The name Braeuner was certainly familiar to me. I have posted several Braeuner stories on this blog. However, the name of Fleischer was unfamiliar, at least to me.
Henrietta Braeuner was the daughter of Christian and Christiane (Mathess) Braeuner. She was born on October 26, 1836 in Prussia. The Braeuner family came to America in 1853 aboard the ship, Leontine. That family can be found on this passenger list.
Henrietta was the youngest in the family, but she was already 18 years old when she arrived. And it was not long after she was here that she was getting married.
The first Perry County evidence I could find of Theodore Fleischer, who was born on February 20, 1829 in Germany, was the marriage record for 1854 that took place on this day 165 years ago. I could not locate him in the 1850 census. The Perry County marriage record for this wedding is shown below.
For some unknown reason, it was Rev. Christoph Heinrich Loeber, the pastor in Frohna, who signed this form. It was Rev. Georg Schieferdecker who was the pastor at Trinity, Altenburg at the time. We know this marriage took place at Trinity because a record is contained in that church’s books.
This couple started having children in 1855, and their first three children were baptized at Trinity. Then, after 1857, their children were baptized at Immanuel, Altenburg. Because of that, I figured there was a good chance that Theodore Fleischer was one of the Trinity members that left that church in 1857 with Rev. Schieferdecker to form Immanuel. Sure enough, I found him in a list of charter members for Immanuel. His name is misspelled on this list.
The Fleischer family can be found in the 1860 census for Brazeau Township.
The last child born in Perry County was born in 1866. After that, we no longer find this family in any records from this county. This must be the time this family picked up and moved to Bates County, Missouri, near Prairie City. The maps shown earlier were made in 1895, so the Lewis (Louis) Fleischer on that image is their oldest son.
According to some information found on Ancestry.com, one more child was born into this family in 1874 in Bates County, bringing their total to 7 children. We find the Fleischer household in the 1870 census for Bates County. Some children had not lived long.
As it turns out, this was the last census in which we find Theodore Fleischer, because he died in 1875. I did manage to find Hattie in the 1900 census living in the Louis Fleischer household. Hattie was 63 years old, and apparently had a granddaughter named after her.
Hattie died in 1911. Here is her death certificate.
Theodore and Hattie are both buried in the Zion Lutheran Cemetery in Prairie City, Missouri.
The name Fleischer just made a short appearance in Perry County, Missouri, before that name moved on to Bates County. As for the name Braeuner, some remained in Perry County and some moved to Bates County. I now know that I have to add another name to the out-migration to Prairie City.
For further information about that out-migration, you can refer to a previous post written by Fred Eggers titled, An Early Out-Migration of Original Immigrants.
